ALEXANDER NEVSKY
****
USSR
This celebrated biopic of a legendary 13th-century warrior who leads the Tartars to defeat a much larger invading Teutonic army isn't necessarily Communist propaganda as much as it is one big middle finger to Hitler and his cronies. (And it certainly isn't subtle - a whole sequence is devoted to the leader of the Teutonic knights coldly dumping Russian infants into a fire.) The establishing scenes drag on, but once the picture reaches the extended climactic battle at frozen Lake Peipus, it becomes rather exciting. The fighting itself isn't necessarily convincing, but it's artfully photographed and edited.
dir: Sergei Eisenstein
ph: Edouard Tissé
ed: Sergei Eisenstein, Esfir Tobak
m: Sergei Prokofiev
cast: Nikolai Cherkassov, Nikolai Okhlopov, Alexander Abrikossov, Dmitri Orlov

ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND
**

ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES
***½

THE BEACHCOMBER
***

LA BÊTE HUMAINE
***
France
Jean Renoir's modernisation of an Emile Zola novel is weirdly schizoid, with the tone oscillating between poetry and purple prose.
   A pre-Hollywood Simone Simon features as French cinema's most blank-faced femme fatale. As a locomotive engineer with women issues, Jean Gabin embarrasses himself gravely when called on to display psychopathic urges trickling from beneath his funeral-earnest persona. The first time the two of them make love they retreat into a barn, emerging moments later in pristine condition to gaze at the moonlight like lovers did in posters for creaky MGM melodramas of the day.
   The most atmospheric sequences are the train trips that bookend the picture.
   When cinéastes suggest that film noir derived from fatalistic French melodramas of the thirties, this is precisely the kind of movie they have in mind.
wr/dir: Jean Renoir
cast: Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux, Julien Carette, Blanchette Brunoy, Jean Renoir

BOYS TOWN
**½

BRINGING UP BABY
*****
USA
An uptight paleontologist gets mixed up with an eccentric heiress.
Maybe the most wonderful thing to ever happen to American screen comedy was the pairing of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. It's a miracle of chemistry and from each insane and ingenious set-up to the next the picture is an impeccably sustained miracle of lunacy. It's difficult to pick a highlight, but the sight of Grant and Hepburn serenading a leopard on a rooftop would definitely rank in the top five.
dir: Howard Hawks
wr: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde
cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Charlie Ruggles, May Robson, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, Fritz Feld, Leona Roberts, George Irving

THE CHILDHOOD OF MAXIM GORKY
****½
USSR
The first of an acclaimed trilogy of films on the life of the Russian writer. The film stock is crude, but the film is lyrical, sensitive and superbly paced. The young performer in the title role does a mean balance of wonder, temperament and vulnerability. He's astonishing - he gives you ground to be mean to every other child actor - and he's supported by a cast of uniformly vivid, vital and delightful characters.
dir: Mark Donskoy
wr: Ilya Gruzdev
m: Lev Shvarts
cast: Aleksei Lyarsky, Varvara Massalitinova, Mikhail Troyanovsky, Yelizaveta Alekseyeva, Vasili Novikov, Aleksandr Zhukov, K. Zubkov, Daniil Sagal, S. Tikhonravov, Igor Smirnov

THE GREAT WALTZ
**

HOLIDAY
****

JEZEBEL
***

JOY OF LIVING
**
USA
A rich playboy pursues an overworked celebrity.
Lazy, protracted, joyless screwball comedy without a sense of pace or what to do with its charismatic stars.
dir: Tay Garnett
cast: Irene Dunne, Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, Alice Brady, Guy Kibbee, Lucille Ball, Eric Blore, Jean Dixon, Warren Hymer, Billy Gilbert

THE LADY VANISHES
****½

LA MARSEILLAISE
****

OLYMPIA PART ONE: FESTIVAL OF THE NATIONS
***
Germany
The first part of Leni Riefenstahl's notorious Hitler-financed document of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Beginning with a symbolic passing of the torch from ancient Athens to modern day Berlin, it episodically presents the competitions in various athletic disciplines. It's ably, efficiently crafted - far from bereft of imagination but not necessarily abounding in it either. Shots of Hitler, swastikas and salutes are indeed numerous but never glorified; there is no insistence on any sort of Aryan superiority - all of the glory is reserved for the winners and, if anyone, the African-American Jesse Owens emerges as the most prominent figure. At least in the English-language version, any sense of Nazi propaganda would have to be projected. Its more obvious value is as a record of the beginnings of modern sports coverage.
dir/ed: Leni Riefenstahl

OLYMPIA PART TWO: FESTIVAL OF BEAUTY
***
Germany
The second part begins promisingly with a beautifully shot and edited sequence of the Olympians' morning training sessions, before moving on to further episodic records of the competitive events and gradually losing interest.
dir/ed: Leni Riefenstahl

PYGMALION
****½

QUAI DES BRUMES
***½
France
A deserter falls in love with a troubled young girl in a harbour.
An influential and highly regarded piece of poetic realism drenched in fatalism. Heavy and uneven, but with moments of great beauty and power.
dir: Marcel Carné
cast: Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Michèle Morgan, Pierre Brasseur, Edouard Delmont, Raymond Aimos, Robert Le Vigan

ROOM SERVICE
****

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU
***